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TEST KITCHEN; A Look That's Hotter Than Toast

IN the world of kitchen appliances, retro is the design du jour. Blenders are rounded and edged in chrome, pressure cookers are back in force and coffee machines are bulky and bright, in cotton candy colors like peach and mint.

But none are as eye-catching as the retro-style toasters whose sleek curves gleam like a 1950's Buick from the shelves of cookware stores. They are beautiful specimens, almost too cool to touch.

And in their own way, a bit frightening. The prices vary widely, from $44.95 to a stunning $369. Does the most expensive perform marvelous tricks that the least expensive can't? How much of this is about looks, and how much of this is about toast?

If you imagined that there might be some secret technological way to make toast, you'd be wrong. It doesn't exist, not even at $369. It's still done pretty much the same way that the cave men did: apply heat to bread until it dries and browns.

I tested four of the new retro-style toasters -- a Dualit, a DeLonghi Classica, a Russell Hobbs Classic Coolwall and a Cuisinart Classic -- along with an original 1950's Toastmaster, bought at a used-kitchenware shop.

The Dualit, sold by Williams-Sonoma, is the most expensive -- $279 for a two-slice toaster and $369 for a four-slice (shown above) -- and it has the fewest features. It has a hand-operated lever (not set on a spring like those on most toasters) for raising and lowering the bread, and a windup timer that ticks ever so urgently. The Dualit was first made in 1948 for restaurant kitchens, and it maintains the sturdy, industrial feel of one made at that time, but with a high polish.

The Dualit toaster can do anything -- thin toast to sliced bagels -- but even if it never gets used, it is a gorgeous object. It can be ordered from Williams-Sonoma at (800) 541-2233.

After the Dualit, prices plummet about $200. The DeLonghi Classica is certainly not as flashy as the Dualit, but it is still a handsome, highly stylized appliance. A simple two-slice toaster with a lever on the side, it's tall and rounded like a loaf of American white bread and is as shiny as a chrome fender. Just a glance, though, is all it takes to detect the differences with the Dualit: it is lighter, the chrome is tinny and the plastic buttons and knobs dilute its feeling of authenticity.

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But it toasts just as well: the slots are long and wide, so they accept both long slices of country bread and thick bagel halves. As you push down the lever, metal racks inside the slots grip the slices, holding them in place between the heating elements so they don't toast unevenly. And its price is a little easier to swallow -- $54.99 at Gracious Home, 1220 Third Avenue (70th Street); (212) 517-6300.

Almost identical in both form and functions to the DeLonghi is the Russell Hobbs toaster. It's $44.95 at Broadway Panhandler, 477 Broome Street (Wooster Street); (212) 966-3434.

The Cuisinart Classic, by contrast, can barely be passed off as retro. A little flatter, flimsier and less like a pumped-up tire, it looks as if the designers went for a retro style, then chickened out halfway.

It has one extra feature: a reheat button. Its usefulness is debatable, but it does actually work. If you place a slice of cold toast in the toaster and press the reheat button, it will heat the slice without browning it further. Its slots, however, are small and narrow. Half a bagel will fit, but there is no way to squeeze in a long slab of country bread. It's $49.99 at the Vinegar Factory, 431 East 91st Street; (212) 987-0885.

The vintage Toastmaster, of course, is the real thing, rounded on one side, squared on the other. Its chrome has speckled with age but it is still shiny, solid enough to double as an anvil.

To find it, I called used-kitchenware stores around New York City. Vintage toasters are available now and then, many managers said. If you look hard enough, you can track down everything from old industrial ones to home versions. And many are reasonably priced. The one I bought was just $20 at Kitschen, 380 Bleecker Street (Charles Street); (212) 727-0430. It would have been $30, if not for the slight fraying of its cord; it seemed to need nothing more than a little polishing.

It promised what all the others did: to make toast. Being so old, though, it was not made to accommodate bagels and certainly not large pieces of bread. Sandwich bread is more its speed.

I plugged it in. Its timer ticked, but not a lick of heat emerged from its coils. And I learned my first lesson about shopping for vintage appliances: be sure it works before you pay for it.